This is fantastic!
Watching yesterday I was thinking... "Well, this is bittersweet... a new season... but I doubt it'll recover and get a 4th season" and now I see this numbers!!!

Of course, it's early to say, but those are still amazing numbers!!

I think the thing about the marketing department doing it right is a matter of priorities... They cared enough about Chuck to promote it, and promote it well, while FOX just didn't seem to give a sh** about Dollhouse. Especially when they already have gold miners like Glee, Bones, American Idol and others...

Now back to the show itself, I was fully entertained!
I'm a bit in a "Why would chuck do that to Sarah??" mood, but oh well. I'll get over it. At least we got that slap out of it, and that was kinda awesome (in a painful way for Chuck, I bet, but still... funny). Also, now we get kung fu. And Zach Levi is even hotter this season.

EDIT: Yesterday I missed the last 10 minutes, internet issues, so only now I re-watched it, and the last scene fixed my "Why would chuck do that to Sarah??" mood. =P

Oh, and I just feel like I can never say this enough, but... I love Yvonne Strahovski.

Yeah, I just remembered its going against House now. Tough decision for anyone to make, so I wouldn't be surprised if it loses a fair bit of its audience due to it being House's returning episode after a while off.

And there's something else in the mix. NBC just announced it is cancelling it's 10 pm Leno slot. So Leno goes back to late night (where he belongs, honestly...that whole 10 pm talk-show five days a week was a disastrous mistake) and the rest of the schedule suddenly gets wide open.

Yeah, but they announced two dramas (they've ordered 8 incredibly promising pilots), a reality and some news or something. You can swap Chuck around, but Chuck is still a family show. I'm not even sure they can find a better place. Wednesday have a lot of competition, Thursdays? Thursday, aka, NBC Comedy Night is the only other time I can think it'd work with: Chuck, 30 Rock, Parks, Office, Community.

While the Simpsons' 450the episode was also last night, Chuck definitely has more competition tonight. HIMYM's 100th (musical) episode, new House, and the Bachelor (Schwartz's Gossip Girl is in repeats I think). Hopefully they can retain most of last night's ratings but at the very least just show a good improvement on last year's ratings and they should be good.
I will with hold comment on the Leno thing since this is Whedonesque except to agree that no way NBC is gonna shuffle that Thursday lineup.